6/14/2010

Future Workspace and Environment: Justin McGrath / POLYFUSE

A lot of people ask me why I haven't done a proper Workspace and Environment article for myself yet. I don't really have a good answer to that other then to say every studio I've had has been compromised in some way. I moved my setup seven times now and I am really getting sick of it. Each time there's a battle that involves acoustics, physical space, neighbors and other less then ideal conditions. Some places have been better then others. So with that said, I should get to my point. I've decided to move my studio out of my home and actually take it all to a space designed for it. In this case I have a very awesome Aunt that has let me remodel a big steel barn on a huge farm to become my new permanent studio.

Now the tricky part, actually doing it. The barn in question is a hudred year old massive horse stable with a riding arena in the back. At some point in the 80's, the previous owners of the farm added a big steel garage type building to the front of the stables. In that building there was some type of office built that included a bathroom and a kitchen. What I am getting at, is that this particular building already had the water, electric, gas and plumbing already running to it which significantly reduces the costs of such a project.

Construction on this started three weeks ago. Rather, deconstruction. One of the first things we had to do was tear down the old horse stable section of the building because it was rotting, falling down and also started to damage the newer building attached. We started to do this work by hand which was becoming impossible so we hired a guy with one of these things to help out. Here's a small (30mb) video of the destruction.

So, now what? Check out exhibit A which is my sad Google Sketech-Up rendering of the 'final product.'

What you see here is the newer steel structure that I'll be redoing the inside of and behind it, the area with trees, is where the old horse stable was torn down. There was concrete underneath the structure already so this will become a big patio of sorts.

Here's exhibit B, a photo of the outside of the steel building:

At this point, we are still in the deconstruction phase. There is a bit more cleanup work to be done and then we start the actual build. I have a ton of video of the process thus far which I'll soon edit and upload. I will also document this project here as it goes and I would love feedback and suggestions along the way as this is all new to me....